Lineage
Each convening, unfurled as an extitutional flow: how care was held, the field that was opened, the resonance that moved through it, and what it presenced, with the many layers of perspective in the room.
No one who was invited is named here. Those present appear only as layers of perspective, the fields of work and practice they brought, never by name, role or affiliation. The two people named are those who extended the invitation to the Amazon Sacred Headwaters, as the origin tells.
- 20 April – 4 May 2022Nature, Technology, Politics and Philanthropy
- 15 – 17 October 2022Ecocoins Coordination Convening
- Early 2023A journey to the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance
- 21 April – 4 May 2023Wisdom Weaving and Ecocoins
- Summer 2023From an eco-coin to a learning journey
- 8 – 9 September 2023Ecoweaving, presented
- 5 – 8 May 2024Energetic (Re)Connection
- 16 August 2024Ecological intelligence and the aesthetics of an emerging Earthwave movement
- 15 – 16 March 2025Ecoweaving with Beloved Intelligence
- 29 March – 4 April 2027Ecoweaving Ecosight & Xenohealth
20 April – 4 May 2022
Nature, Technology, Politics and Philanthropy
A two-week deep dive, the first of what became the Wilbur Nature Workshops, an extitutional series held each spring at Wilbur Hot Springs. Taking inspiration from a novel that imagines a ministry for future generations, and considering tools from smart contracts to satellite data, it asked how we might take more radical steps to accelerate safely out of the present collision and towards a positive future for nature and humans.
- CareTwo weeks on healing land, long enough for people to arrive as more than their roles.
- FieldNature, technology, politics and philanthropy held in one conversation instead of four.
- ResonanceBrainstorming how personal and collective impact might be maximised to preserve and restore nature.
- PresencingThe future, through an imagined ministry that speaks for generations to come; the present, through satellite data and smart contracts.
layers of perspective presenced
The questions of that spring seeded a second, more focused convening in the autumn.
15 – 17 October 2022
Ecocoins Coordination Convening
A coordination convening around “ecocoins”: the social, technical, legal and financial tools and infrastructure for coordination, governance, and the digital measurement, reporting and verification of carbon drawdown (and keepdown) and the full range of ecosystem services that protect and regenerate biodiversity.
- CareA weekend on the land, then an evening salon in a shared home in the city, open to a wider circle.
- FieldThe stack of tools for valuing nature: satellites, registries, credits, tokens, law.
- ResonanceWorking sessions in the hills; reflection, food and conversation in the salon.
- PresencingRemote sensing, climate data, ecological credits, rainforest advocacy and commons economics in one room, with white papers on nature-based currencies, credit governance and nature oracles shared beforehand.
layers of perspective presenced
Between this convening and the next, a journey south changed the question, and gave the work its name.
Early 2023
A journey to the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance
A small delegation from the Global North, collaborators on fairer systems design, travelled at the invitation of Atossa Soltani and Uyunkar Domingo Peas Nampichkai to live for a time with an Indigenous community on the shores of the Pastaza River, as the arrival of voluntary carbon markets in their territories drew near. They came ready to help, and were kindly called in.
- CareTo pause in urgent times: not the moment for solutioning. To encounter the ‘how’ before rushing to the ‘what’.
- FieldTerritories protected for hundreds of generations, now pressed by roads, extraction and carbon offers that pit families and communities against each other.
- ResonanceMeeting the land, meeting each other, meeting each other’s dreams.
- PresencingLeaders of the federations of the Alliance entrusted the delegation with a further invitation: to gather aligned people into a learning and unlearning journey, on their terms.
layers of perspective presenced
On 9 April 2023, in Puyo, thirteen federations of seven Indigenous nationalities (Waorani, Sapara, Achuar, Shuar, Shiwiar, Kichwa and Andwa) signed a political agreement to inquire together into how to protect their territories, ways of life and ancestral wisdom. Ecoweaving was ritually en-spirited in the space this journey opened. See the origin.
21 April – 4 May 2023
Wisdom Weaving and Ecocoins
An initial week among a smaller group to build the context and container, then a four-day gathering of around forty to fifty people. Its prompt: how the tools and infrastructure for climate finance and biodiversity regeneration are created and governed will determine the fate of our planet, and the current path rests on stories that displace or silence the very earth protectors and wisdom keepers who steward its most biodiverse places.
- CareA land revered as healing and ceremonial ground by the Yocha Dehe, Patwin and Colusa tribes of the Wintun Nation, and by the Pomo; an embodied reset from default patterns of cognition and relation; space for grief and for getting it wrong.
- FieldA shared context on remote sensing, climate data, ecological credits, impact certificates, bioregional funds and an eco-coin architecture; then working groups on oracles and truth-seeking, personhood and sovereignty, community data, an Indigenous rights hotline, nature finance and personal accountability.
- ResonanceA Council of All Beings, letters to ancestors, tea ceremony and a grief circle, a storytelling game, qi gong, dance, watershed restoration, an ancestral story of the myths of money, a meditation for threatened living systems, and a closing ceremony.
- PresencingDescendants of Indigenous root gatherers who have come to that land for over a century visited, and a basket woven from local pine needles became a symbol of connection between gatherers and participants.
layers of perspective presenced
The question of a single “ecocoin” met its contradictions: what would a framework look like that does not assume it has the right solution? Participants formed a relational response team for the federations’ technical working group, prepared a Gift Basket of options, precedents, risks and opportunities, and entered an Allies Covenant on six first principles.
Summer 2023
From an eco-coin to a learning journey
Six months on, the most significant outcome was a reappraisal: from defining a system architecture and solution, to a reciprocal learning journey that optimises for relationality and kinship.
- CareMaking time for relational vulnerability and sitting with contradiction, as daily practice.
- FieldStorytelling and ontologies: what is the underlying ontological operating system we are building on, and is it enough to add voices to a table without looking at the table itself?
- ResonanceA weavers’ covenant, a Gift Basket of threads (finance flows, Indigenous-led governance, government relations, legal structures), and patterns for gathering: unlearning journeys, salons, a shared glossary, recognition of contributions.
- PresencingLearning out loud, beside an alliance of around thirty federations stewarding some thirty million hectares of forest.
layers of perspective presenced
The reappraisal was shared in public at Funding the Commons in Berlin that September.
8 – 9 September 2023
Ecoweaving, presented
Beginning with a shared breath and the atmospheric rivers breathed out by the Amazon, the talk unfurled extitutionality, a word born out of jams among commons-aligned kin, as the counterpart to institutional theory: coordination beyond rules and roles, being seen not for the institution you represent but for the fullness of who you are.
- CareOpening with breath: one atom in each body from every breath every human has taken.
- FieldWhy finance-first solutions, carbon processes out of right relation and solutionism fail the living commons.
- ResonanceEcoweaving is not a new institution, nor a new solution: a pluriverse of paths, an open-source learning and unlearning journey that is itself a commons.
- PresencingThe six first principles, and the federations’ two emerging ideas: to set their own terms as sellers, and a fund to buy on them.
layers of perspective presenced
The following spring, the gathering at Wilbur turned towards the body and the land.
5 – 8 May 2024
Energetic (Re)Connection
Three days of deep connection, ceremonial co-creation and rejuvenation, attuning to the rhythms of the earth, the wind and our own hearts, and carrying the energetic connection some had brought back from the Amazon Sacred Headwaters.
- CareEach day opened and closed with somatic practice; meals were cooked by a sacred kitchen; the healing waters held the group.
- FieldAn ecocredits initiative for the land’s own sacred spaces and biodiversity, and an introduction to autonomous ecological institutions.
- ResonanceGuided meditation, animist nature walks, music and ceremony, elemental groups, a guided procession to a spring.
- PresencingThree days, three horizons: those we walk alongside, those who walked before us, those who walk after us.
layers of perspective presenced
That summer, the weaving turned to ecological intelligence.
16 August 2024
Ecological intelligence and the aesthetics of an emerging Earthwave movement
An afternoon into evening of jam sessions, weaving threads from the decentralised web, collective intelligence, speaking for forests, Earthwave musicalities and interspecies listening, at a turning moment in the history of the planet.
- CareAn open door, in person and remote, from the afternoon into the evening.
- FieldTowards interoperable ecological institutions: protocols to grow autonomous and convivial ecological actors.
- ResonanceEarthwave possibilities: ecology, music, art and dance in poetry; somatic synaesthesia; place-based grief and belonging.
- PresencingThe voice of nature, and collective intelligence with agents.
layers of perspective presenced
Seven months later, the weaving was offered as a talk on beloved intelligence.
15 – 16 March 2025
Ecoweaving with Beloved Intelligence
A meditative talk on collective breath, ancestral wisdom and relational knowledge: ecoweaving as an invitation to breathe the same beloved air, together, and as a new and ancient form of diplomacy. It was the first time the Declaration of Autopoietic Hyperstition and Universal Interbeing was introduced.
- CareA breath with the hum of the archive, and an acknowledgement of the unceded homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone.
- FieldComputational law as an interface of legibility; AI and more-than-human beings in citizens’ assemblies.
- ResonanceSemantic crystals that share a node with breath: aroha, samay, qi.
- PresencingBeloved intelligence: intersubjective, collaborative, un-coerced.
Read the full talk, with its recordings.
29 March – 4 April 2027
Ecoweaving Ecosight & Xenohealth
A residency week weaving ecoweaving with ecosight and with xenohealth, the theory of health for an era of biological, ecological and synthetic entanglement.
See the xenohealth lineage.